The Hounds of the Morrigan

by Pat O'Shea

  She stroked the top of his head gently with her fingertips as they walked along towards an inlet of water that led back to the lake. He kept blinking his golden-ringed eyes but said nothing for a while. Presently he said:

  ‘Dis hev bin a lesson to me an’ from dis on I’ll be more clever. But you two hev bin friends in need an’ in deed, an’ if you ever want any doings done—or if I can ever do anything dat would help you—I woan let you down, an’ dat’s my sollum word.’

  ‘You’re very good, Puddeneen,’ Brigit said. She kissed the top of his head.

  ‘I know I am. Doan do dat—you’ll get warts.’

  ‘Yes, you are good,’ Pidge said. ‘That’s a very brave offer.’

  ‘Is it?’ Puddeneen asked and looked instantly worried.

  Brigit set him down carefully at the edge of the little inlet where the water was slapping lazily into white lace.

  ‘Dis is da ends of da earth,’ he declared, ‘here begins da water.’

  ‘What do you mean this is the ends of the earth! Is that as far as you’d follow us? I don’t think much of that,’ accused Brigit.

  Puddeneen looked down and turned his head from side to side.

  ‘Dere’s no more—look. Dis is da furdlingest place in Ireland izzen it? See for yourself—no more ground cos dis is da brim of it, and da water starts here,’ he answered with honest surprise at her response.

  ‘You’re daft,’ she said.

  ‘Doan matter what you think of me,’ he said generously, ‘I’ll never think less of you.’

  He looked at the water nervously.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Pidge asked.

  ‘I just hope I heven’t got a puncture after all I bin through, dat’s all. I could get swamped an’ go down like a ton of bricks.’

  ‘We wouldn’t let that happen.’

  ‘Well—here goes den!’

  He jumped in.

  Finding that he floated, he spread out his back legs and said grandly:

  ‘See me leggies? Puffect, izzen dey?’

  And he swam off doing the breaststroke and singing:

  ‘One Alone … To Be My Own … . ’

  They watched until they could see him no more.

  ‘He’s gone,’ said Brigit sadly.

  ‘Yes. I hope we see him again.’

  ‘I suppose we won’t; the lake’s too big and wide. He’s gone off now to see Miss Fancy Finnerty and we’ll probably never lay eyes on him again. He’s the most stupid thing I ever saw. But I wish he’d stayed here near us, so that we could see him and play with him sometimes.’

  ‘Maybe we will,’ Pidge said.

  They made for home.

  As they walked across the field, Brigit said:

  ‘We never got our Hafner’s Sausages, nor the Kiss Pie and Walking Stick—whatever they are. Wait ‘till Auntie Bina hears about those two witches; she’ll be fit to be tied.’

  ‘Don’t say anything about them or what’s happened, Brigit.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She might get worried or frightened.’

  ‘Auntie Bina? What could frighten her? She’d face a mad bull with only a feather in her hand.’

  ‘If she went over there to them to tell them off, they might turn her into something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Anything. A chicken or an … eggcup or anything.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘And she mightn’t let us out, if she knew. She might keep us in or just near the house.’

  ‘Oh! What about Daddy when he comes back?’

  ‘Don’t tell him either. They’d have no peace; they’d just be anxious all the time. And somehow we’re part of what’s going on and how could we do anything, if we weren’t let out?’

  ‘What might we have to do?’

  ‘I don’t know …yet.’

  ‘If I just told about Puddeneen, or about my handcuffs?’ Brigit said wistfully.

  ‘Better not.’

  As they climbed up the last wall that was nearest to their house, they saw a Garda sergeant riding by on his bike. He was going in the direction of Mossie Flynn’s.

  ‘I hope he arrests those two for something and they get six months each in the jug,’ said Brigit.

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘They didn’t follow us, did they? That’s cos they’re afraid I’ll do more magic on them. Remember the way I made them scream?’

  ‘Oh, they’re not afraid of you and me; don’t think it, Brigit. Something else must have stopped them or they’d have caught us easily—if they wanted to.’

  ‘I wonder if Auntie Bina would like me to saw her in half? I bet I could if I had a box. And a saw.’

  ‘Brigit!’

  ‘All right. I won’t say anything. I wouldn’t really like to have an eggcup or a chicken for an Aunt.’

  They sat on top of the wall for some moments. Their own house was just across the road. They saw the horsebox standing empty in the farmyard and knew that their father had come back from Dublin with the new mare.

  She had come at last.

  It’s queer how I had forgotten all about this with the adventures of the day, Pidge thought; and I had longed for it for such ages too.

  They jumped down and ran to see what she looked like.

  Michael, their father, stood alone in the yard, holding the bridle in one hand and stroking the long slope of the mare’s face with the other.

  She was as creamy and silky and beautiful as Pidge had hoped her to be.

  He tried to notice everything about her at one sweeping glance: the marvellous head and the whole shape of her; the way her flanks shimmered and the strands of gold that appeared in her thick mane, in the light of the afternoon sun. He saw the strength in her body and the quiver of her shapely muscles; the beauty of her fine head and the elegance of her slender legs. He marvelled that such legs could support that strong body and wondered why it didn’t look very wrong and daft, instead of just right.

  Pidge looked with a broad smile at his father; but Michael was so wrapped up in his ownership of such a beautiful animal that he didn’t even notice.

  Brigit was asking to be lifted up which was the normal thing whenever their father came back from anywhere, if it was only from working in the fields; but he couldn’t seem to hear her.

  ‘Where’s Sally?’ Pidge asked.

  Sally was their good, loving, faithful, humorous and playful sheepdog and she always went where Michael went. People called her Michael’s Shadow.

  His father didn’t seem to hear his question so he asked it again.

  ‘Sally? Oh, she ran away or got lost when I was buying the mare,’ his father answered carelessly and continued to stroke the long and lovely face.

  ‘What?’ said Brigit. ‘Is Sally gone?’

  ‘It would seem so.’

  Pidge couldn’t believe his ears. Sally lost or run away and his father caring nothing about it? But he loves that dog, he said to himself, he must have searched everywhere for her, broken-hearted; and he’s not saying much so that we won’t be upset.

  ‘Couldn’t you find her anywhere?’ Pidge suggested.

  ‘Why would I bother to look for her?’ Michael answered, without once taking his eyes from the mare to look at them or really notice them, and his words sounding queer and hard-hearted, somehow.

  He’s like one in a trance, Pidge thought; and the mare turned and looked at him.

  He was shocked to see something like flames flickering wildly inside the eyes, that blazed for an instant only and then dwindled to something that might be two red stones or two small fires, deep within the pupils. They looked so strange and frightening that Pidge shuddered and stepped back.

  Two swallows came looping through the air and came to rest on the roof of the barn where generations of them had made their nests under the eaves. They were happy and began to sing.

  The mare held Pidge’s eyes for some seconds in a very deliberate way and then she looked upwards and stopped the swallows’ throaty song with
one glance, The little birds huddled and went very small. And then the mare returned her stare to Pidge’s startled face.

  A picture came into his mind; flocks of superbly coloured butterflies, some with wings of an amazing size—all dropping to the ground dying, and turning to dirty ashes; trees of great magnificence whose leaves fell in great flurries until the branches were stark; and then smoking branches and trunks splitting open and falling all twisted and in pain, and becoming ashes like the butterflies and then lying as pools of horrid, dark, treacly water; and people in fields becoming queer, warped, creeping things, full of tears.

  Amazed Pidge looked at his father in horror.

  ‘Her eyes are funny,’ he said, slightly stammering, ‘they’re all red inside.’

  Michael laughed loudly, with a strange, hard edge to his voice, and he looked at Pidge with a piercing cold stare, as though he didn’t know him and cared as little for him as he cared for Sally.

  Pidge felt a kind of pain inside his chest and was full of misery. He tried to smile at his father, but it was too difficult; there was such a lump in his throat and the tears prickling behind his eyes.

  The mare drew his gaze once more. There was a hint of pleasure or satisfaction in her eyes, if such a thing could be possible. He just caught a glimpse of it before it was replaced by a look of the most ferocious intelligence, that made Pidge wonder if he were seeing aright.

  Auntie Bina called out that dinner, or supper, or whatever they liked to call it at this hour of the day, was ready; and would they come in at once, please.

  Pidge stood and stared as his father a moment longer and then turned to go inside.

  And he was downcast and unhappy as never before, and wished for night-time and the end of the strangest day that he had ever lived. He felt worn out. His legs were solid and lifeless and he could hardly drag one after the other.

  Brigit, however, was entirely herself, as if she had noticed nothing odd about the mare or Michael; though she did say, perhaps by accident:

  ‘Oh good! I could eat a horse!’

  Chapter 8

  INSIDE the glasshouse, the women looked at the daisy chains and laughed derisively.

  ‘Such fun,’ Melodie murmured. ‘We haven’t had such fun for ages!’

  ‘This won’t take long,’ Breda said.

  They held their wrists up close to their mouths and began to lick the metal. Their tongues became as rasps directly and the glasshouse was filled with the noise of scratchy filing—exactly the sound that cinders munched by horses would make.

  After a while they grew angry as the metal held and would not give way.

  ‘That pest Angus Óg, himself and his daisies! I might have known,’ Breda fumed.

  ‘Tears are required, I think,’ said Melodie.

  They held the bracelets where their tears might fall on the metal and began to cry. Drops of acid fell from their eyes, but still the metal remained callous and would not soften.

  They fell into a fury of anger and danced round and round the glasshouse in a frenzy of licking and crying, until after a long time, the beautiful little bracelets fell to the floor.

  They were on the point of leaving to see if they could catch up with the children and the frog, when there was a knock on the glasshouse door.

  ‘Who’s this?’ Breda asked in surprise.

  ‘Hush, listen!’ Melodie whispered.

  Outside, a voice was saying:

  ‘There’s a glasshouse all right—in the position stated—that much tallies anyway.’

  ‘Open the door,’ Melodie murmured.

  The Garda Sergeant stood at the opened door of the glasshouse.

  ‘It’s a Noble Savage,’ said Breda, turning back from the door to look at Melodie.

  The Sergeant glanced behind him, to see who it was that she meant. As there was no one standing behind, he realized that she was talking about himself.

  ‘I’m not a Noble Savage, madam,’ he declared.

  ‘It’s an Ignoble Savage,’ Breda informed Melodie.

  ‘I’m not a savage at all, my good woman. I’m a Garda Sergeant!’ she was told very firmly.

  ‘It’s a Police Sergeant,’ Breda told Melodie.

  ‘Anyone can make a mistake,’ the Sergeant said gallantly.

  Melodie looked at him through a pair of binoculars.

  ‘I might have guessed!’ she cried. ‘Look at the fine pair of shoulders he has to support his neck and noddle, and the thigh muscles breaking the seams of his trousers. He really is a picture!’

  ‘Now that you mention it,’ said Breda as she squinted at him through a magnifying glass, ‘I can’t help observing what a wonderful physical specimen he is, indeed. The manly jaw! The eyes of steel! The magnificent brow! The strength of his nose stuck on to his face like a figurehead! A housetrained thoroughbred! Le dernier cri!’

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Melodie

  ‘That’s all,’ Breda said.

  Melodie glittered a smile at the Sergeant.

  ‘Were you fed on minced kelp as a child? What is the secret of your superb personal body?’ she asked, simpering.

  ‘It was the buttermilk that done the job,’ the Sergeant confided, shyly pleased. The ladies’ open admiration had disarmed him completely.

  ‘You don’t say,’ Melodie said with interest. ‘Well, well, well!’

  ‘Say “cheese” before you go, if you please. I always like to snap any celebrity, exhibit, curio or bric-a-brac that crosses my path,’ said Breda as she unstrapped a camera and pointed it at him.

  The Sergeant smiled foolishly. He could feel himself doing it but he didn’t know how to stop.

  ‘There’s a terrible draught, Breda,’ Melodie chirruped from within. ‘Won’t you shut the door?’

  ‘You see how it is, Dear Sergeant,’ Breda said apologetically.

  ‘Yes indeed,’ the Sergeant replied, without knowing what it was exactly that he was supposed to see.

  ‘So, pip-pip and farewell,’ said Breda and she quickly shut the door.

  The Sergeant stood for a moment in bewilderment. He felt that something had gone wrong somewhere. Something had been left out! Ah yes. He himself had been left out when he had really expected to be invited in, before the closing of the door. That must be it, all right. It had been done so quickly—he had been surprised; but so politely that it must have been a mistake on the part of these charming and sensible ladies.

  Thinking about this, he began to walk slowly away, rubbing the side of his nose with his thumb because he was perplexed.

  When he had walked a few yards, he stopped. Goodness! he said to himself. I was bedazzled entirely and forgot me duty. It’s me duty that got left out!

  He went back to the glasshouse and again knocked at the door.

  This time Melodie opened it. The Sergeant waited, confident of a warm, even gushing welcome.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Breda called from inside.

  ‘It’s that fool with the face like a bashed crab,’ said Melodie.

  ‘What?’ said the Sergeant, not at all sure if he had heard aright.

  ‘Policemen get faces like that when they drink illicit liquor after confiscating it from hard-working poteen-makers. That’s what happens when they drink illegal booze!’ Breda said.

  ‘Shouldn’t drink the evidence,’ Melodie said severely; and she wagged her finger in his face.

  The Sergeant went red from shame and anger. How do they know that? he thought. Is it true about me face? It was all right this morning when I was looking in the mirror. They’re just guessing. He squared up to them.

  ‘That’ll be enough of that,’ he said, ‘or you’ll be scrubbing floors in a House of Correction!’ He got out his official notebook and pencil.

  ‘Information has been laid against you,’ he intoned pompously, ‘by a passing Swedish rock-climber—’

  ‘A rock-climber? Round here? East of the Corrib? Nothing to climb round here,’ Melodie interrupted him.

  ‘He was on his way
to a rock!’ the Sergeant said masterfully. ‘Anybody could guess And it was then that he saw a certain occurrence.’that!

  ‘What certain occurrence?’ asked Breda sweetly.

  ‘He alleges that items of furniture descended from the sky in the near vicinity of this glasshouse. The description of the furniture matches exactly some furniture that was taken from a store in Galway, and it is believed that you are in possession of these objects. He states that he saw you assisting it to land. What do you say about that?’

  ‘How was it stolen in the first place?’ Melodie asked, as if daring him.

  The Sergeant blushed before replying sturdily:

  ‘The suspicion is that it was conjured in some way, for it certainly flew out of the windows in a manner not at all natural! Shoplifting in a new way no doubt; but there’s a law against it!’

  ‘You’re a buffoon, sir!’ said Breda.

  ‘And I under the impression that he was a scholar and a gentleman!’ Melodie said shaking her head sadly.

  ‘I never heard such misguided twaddle,’ said Breda.

  ‘Swedish hallucinations are no concern of ours,’ said Melodie.

  ‘Had he been at the alcohol too?’

  ‘Did you get him to blow up one of those balloons of yours to measure the amount he had drunk?’

  ‘Don’t tell us that he was as sober as a Judge—held up by string, most of them!’

  ‘The accusation is outrageous!’ said Melodie.

  ‘Monstrous!’ agreed Breda. ‘If we shoplifted—where’s the evidence?’

  She stepped outside into the sunshine.

  ‘Inside that glasshouse,’ said the Sergeant.

  Melodie emerged and stood beside Breda. She carefully closed the door of the glasshouse after her.

  ‘Oh really?’ she said.

  ‘We are very lambs of innocence,’ said Breda. ‘You have only to look at our faces to see that we are without a speck of guile.’

  ‘Speckless,’ murmured Melodic

  Together, they presented two guileless faces to the Sergeant’s view.

  Bashed crabs, he thought vengefully. ‘I’ve got a search warrant,’ he smiled.

  ‘Unspeakable Sergeant!’ cried Melodie. ‘Does that mean you are going to have a look inside?’